רבינו בחיי — ואנכי הסתר אסתיר פני

Q — הסתר אסתיר is an unusual double construction — the absolute infinitive intensifying the imperfect. Is the doubling rhetorical or doing real work?

A — Rabbeinu Bachya unveils a numerical chiddush that has become one of the most cited gematriot in Torah literature. The Torah had already mentioned a single hester earlier in the parsha — והסתרתי פני מהם — which RBB identifies as referring to galus Bavel, a brief seventy-year hester. Here the language doubles: הסתר אסתיר. The doubling encodes our current galus, a hester of hester — a hiddenness so deep that we cannot even see that we are hidden. And the precise duration is buried in the gematria itself: הסתר אסתיר = 1335. That number is not arbitrary — it is exactly the number Daniel concludes his vision with: אשרי המחכה ויגיע לימים אלף שלש מאות ושלשים וחמשה. RBB therefore reads two sealed prophetic texts as one ciphered message: Moshe in Devarim and Daniel in his final vision are pointing at the same endpoint, in the same number, separated only by language. The Torah's own letters contain the date when the hester will end.